? ? ? ? ? ? Why Saliva Testing? ? Address: Clearwater, FL Hours: 10am to 5pm Monday - Friday Free Consultation line: 727-443-4524 Local Orders: 727-489-7577 U.S. Orders: 800-203-9668 International Orders: 727-489-7577 Fax: 727-230-0729 Visit our website: www.bonvida.biz E-mail: [email protected] Disclaimer • The collection of this saliva sample is for research purposes only. • The research results are not intended as a diagnosis of any medical condition. • If you are, or suspect that you are, ill you should consult a competent practitioner who specializes in your condition. • Women using any type of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, DHEA, etc. should have a pap smear and saliva test at least twice per year and a mammogram at least twice per year and a mammogram at least once per year. Doing these things can help to detect any abnormalities in hormone levels or tissue growth of the reproductive organs. • Each participant will be sent a copy of the research results with an explanation of them. © Copyright 2003. All rights reserved. S&J Publishing. WHY Should You Test Your Hormone Levels? • Our health is very important to us and hormones have a lot to do with the state of our health. As we grow older our hormone levels decline which causes a decline in the health of our body. • Hormones are some of the most important chemicals in the human body because they transmit vital information to every cell. They tell nutrients where to go and waste products to be removed; they tell the cells to reproduce; they help keep our nervous system intact. Hormones prevent bone loss and help build new ones; they even help in the transport of nerve impulses in the brain from one cell to the next and much, much more. Without hormones we would not survive. • As our hormones decline we can replace them with supplemental hormones, but to do so we need to find out to what extent they have declined. • This is where saliva testing comes in. Testing hormone levels through saliva is the ‘state-of-the-art’ in hormone testing. 1 WHY Are Hormones So Important? Estrogen: • Helps prevent depression and anxiety in males and females. • Helps prevent fatigue and exhaustion in both sexes. • Helps prevent headaches and migraines. • Helps maintain a normal sleep cycle. • Helps prevent heart attacks and strokes in both sexes. • Is responsible for the maintenance of a normal skin structure. It helps keep skin cells hydrated, which keeps the skin supple and helps prevent wrinkles. • Is necessary, along with progesterone, to transmit nerve impulses from one cell to another in the brain. Without them short term memory can suffer. • It slows down bone loss. Without estrogen and progesterone the bones deteriorate and osteoporosis can develop. • It helps our blood coagulate normally. • It helps the bowels move normally so that important nutrients can be absorbed. • The proper amount of estrogens in the blood helps elevate HDL (the good cholesterol) and lower LDL (the bad one). • It also has a positive influence on the sex drive. • It helps normalize blood vessels. • Helps maintain 20/20 eyesight. • And much, much more! Progesterone: • Opposes estrogens which helps prevent reproductive cancers. • Helps prevent depression and anxiety in males and females. • Helps prevent headaches and migraines. • Helps prevent fatigue and exhaustion in both sexes. • Helps maintain a normal sleep cycle. • Helps prevent heart attacks and strokes in both sexes. 2 • • • • • • • • Is necessary to maintain the coating on the all nerve bundles of the body. Without it this coating can deteriorate, the nerves can be attacked and disorders of the nervous system can occur. Is necessary, along with estrogen to transmit nerve impulses from one cell to another in the brain. It tells the cells that build the bones to build them. It has a relaxing effect on the nervous system. It also has a positive influence on the sex drive. It helps normalize blood vessels. Helps reduce water retention. And much, much more! Testosterone: • • • • • • • Helps prevent depression and anxiety in males. Gives both sexes the sensitivity in their erogenous zones so they can engage in intercourse and conception. It maintains muscle mass, which helps keep the metabolism high and fat off. It helps to keep males from developing bone loss. It inhibits estrogen from growing the prostate tissue which can develop into prostate cancer. Is necessary, along with progesterone and estrogen, to transmit nerve impulses from one cell to another in the brain. Without them short term memory can suffer. And much, much more! Cortisol: • • • • 3 Helps shuttle blood sugar and minerals into our cells so we have more energy. Helps us fall asleep. Helps in the regulation of the immune system which allows our body to recover from the ravaging effects of stress. And much, much more! VERSUS Saliva Testing Other Types of Testing • • • • • • • Blood testing was the first way of testing hormones; however, as time went on it was found that urine was much more accurate. It’s now known that saliva is even more accurate than urine. So much so that The World Health Organization uses it as the method of choice for hormone testing. Progesterone, for instance, is rapidly cleared from the blood stream and sent on its way to the target tissue. 50% of it is gone within the first 5 minutes of entering the blood stream; therefore, trying to measure progesterone accurately with a blood test is futile. The majority of blood tests only test for FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) not progesterone, testosterone, estrogen, etc. Hormones travel through the blood stream in two ways: boundto-proteins and free. The free form is the active form of the hormone and what should be measured. This is the form that is measured by saliva tests. Urine testing tests only the material left behind from the breakdown and elimination of the hormones. Hormones are not something you want to take chances with. They are too important to the whole body; therefore, you need to make sure that you use a totally accurate testing method. Saliva testing is thousands of times more accurate than muscle testing of any kind. Saliva, urine and blood are standard medical testing methods, meaning that you get the same result each time. Muscle testing is an ‘alternative’ testing method and for hormones is extremely unreliable and non-standard. It’s also too general and can vary too much from one practitioner to the next. With muscle testing there is just way too much room for error when it comes to determining which and how much hormones a person needs. If your practitioner is not using saliva testing for hormones, let him/her know that we can provide that service for them so they can more accurately help you. Saliva collection can be done in your own home without the cost of a doctor’s visit and the pain of drawing blood. 4 WHY Have your Testing Done at Nature’s Botanicals? For the past few years we have been using the laboratory owned by the man who invented the saliva hormone testing method. When we first started using this lab, about 1 in 10 tests came back with results that didn’t match the customers’ complaints. For example, a woman’s progesterone should be between 500 - 3000 and the test results for one woman showed that her progesterone was 4356. This woman was menopausal and not using any supplemental hormones. So these results were invalid. Not understanding how this could be, I called the lab. One of the Naturo-pathic doctors working there gave me an explanation that I also didn’t under-stand, but I thought I didn’t understand because I was too uneducated to do so. The woman I was helping decided to disregard the test results and started using bio-identical progesterone and estrogens and her complaints subsided. After several incidents of elevated hormone levels in test results, phone calls to the lab and no understandable explanation, I began to ignore the results and listen to the women. Once I adopted this policy more people were helped. About Nov. 2002 I began getting test results showing the progesterone to be around 26,000, 43,000 and 51,000. This was SO outrageous that I began calling the lab again, but this time the explanation was that “the customers were somehow contaminating the saliva sample”. This also did not wash as my customers were not doing anything different from what they had been doing throughout the years we had been using that lab. It seemed that something, or someone, at the lab had changed. I started to suspect that they had a new lab technician who was causing this. After several incidents of this, I decided that I needed to take control of the situation and become trained in saliva testing. A few months after this, a nurse practitioner from Pennsylvania, who was vacationing in Clearwater, came into my store. During our conversation she told me that she has her own practice and advises women to use natural, bio-identical hormones. She also had been using the same lab and getting the same results; just like me, she had been calling them and getting the same “the customer contaminated the sample” explanation. By this time I was already scheduled to go to Pennsylvania State University (one of the top research universities in the country) for my training. I called them and asked them what could be the reason for these types of test results. They told me that it was most likely that the lab technician was sloppy with her lab techniques. Now THAT made more sense to me. I called the lab back and spoke with them about this; they still insisted that it could not be on their end and that it was the customer. That was the last straw, and we have not sent another sample to them since. 5 Soon I was packing to leave for Penn State. I asked my husband to give me a sample of his saliva so I could test it when I got there. The next morning when I began my training, I gave the saliva sample to my trainer. She looked at it, then at me and said, “It’s not frozen.” I said, “So.” She said, “It’s going to smell bad when we open it.” I said, “So.” She said, “It has bacteria in it. That’s why it’ll smell bad.” I said, “So.” She said, “Bacteria will interfere with the test and make it look like the hormones are higher than they really are.” I said, “Oh!” as the light came on! My husband’s saliva sample was only 22 hours old; and if there were enough bacteria in it to interfere with the test, that meant that all the samples we sent to the lab, through the post, were chock full of bacteria. Eighty-five percent of the samples that were sent to the lab were sent first class post which took anything from 3 to 10 days to get there. Not only did those samples spend time at room temperature, they sat in hot mail trucks each day as they traveled to their final destination. The higher the temperature, the faster the bacteria grows. And it was the extremely high bacterial count in the samples that was causing the elevated readings in the test results. During my training I also found out that not only were the test results wrong, very important data in the instructions were missing. There are things that have to be and cannot be done 24 hours before collecting your saliva sample, and the majority of these things were not in the instructions in the saliva collection kits from the lab we were using. I also found out how precise the lab technician has to be when doing the test. The hormones and the chemicals used to test for them are measured in ‘microliters’, which is an incredibly small amount. Even an extra drop of any of the liquids used will give a false reading. That is why the person performing the test has to be very meticulous in their lab techniques. Plus the equipment has to be calibrated on a regular basis to ensure accuracy. Any of these things could have been a factor in the inaccurate test results we were receiving from the lab we were using. As I came to realize all the above, it also became clear to me that there were people who actually had hormone depletion whose test results came back normal. I also realized why I had not been able to help a percentage of my customers. It was because . . . the test results were wrong! All these factors are what led me to get trained to do saliva testing and set up my own lab. Helping people handle hormone imbalances is my job, and I take it very seriously. If it is not done correctly, people can have many problems and can even die from the cancers caused by the imbalances. I want to have full control over all aspects of my business to make sure that we are giving the customers the very best that can be given from saliva collection. I want my customers to get all the health benefits possible from hormonal balance. So, it is just like it has been said, “If you want it done right, do it yourself.” And that is exactly what we are doing now. If you want an accurate test result, you need to use our lab. 6 Frequently Asked Questions: Q: How can my hormone levels be checked from just one day’s saliva? A: Hormone levels change throughout the month and throughout a person’s lifetime. The only thing any hormone test can do is give you a ‘snapshot’ of where a person’s hormone levels are at that point in time. Are they 10%, 30%, 50% or 90% depleted? To find out, the test results have to be compared to some other hormone levels. Well, we do not want to compare them to another person of the same age. If we did, the hormone levels of the person we were testing would look ‘normal’. And by the way, that is what the conventional medical field does. They say, “Your hormones are normal...for your age.” We want to compare them to someone of about 22 years of age because that is just after puberty and the hormones are in the optimum range. Once we compare the test results to a 22 year old, then we can see the degree of depletion and then the woman will know how much to supplement. And then she can be tested to see if she is using correct amount. Q: How often do I need to test my hormone levels? A: There are really only three times people need to test their hormone levels. Any other tests are a waste of one’s money. 1. Before they begin hormone supplementation - this is to determine what the levels are so as to use the proper amount. 2. Three months after they begin supplementation - which is when the hormone receptors are normalized again. That is the time to be checked to make sure the amount being supplemented is correct. 3. Then at least two times per year to make sure that the amount you are supplementing stays correct. Q: Can’t I use a lab in my area? A: If you plan on that you must make sure that they are following the correct protocol. If they are not, your test results will be incorrect and you will have wasted your money. Q: Can’t I get a blood or urine test? A: No. These two forms of testing are outdated and test the wrong substances. See ‘Saliva Testing Verses Other Types of Testing’ in this brochure. 7 Q: If I’m using supplemental hormones should I stop using them? A: That depends on what the researcher is trying to find out. Sometimes the researcher wants to know what hormone levels are before people start using supplemental hormones. Sometimes the researcher wants to find out what the hormone levels are while people are using supplemental hormones. Check with the research lab of Nature’s Botanicals before collecting your saliva sample to see which research project you will be part of. If you are to be included in the research of people who are not using supplemental hormones, make sure that you do not use any kind of hormones, such as progesterone, estrone, estriol and/or estradiol, DHEA, testosterone, cortisol, any kind of testosterone precursors, such as androstenedion, 19-5-norandrostenediol, 19-4-norandrostenediol, etc., for at least 48 hours prior to collecting your saliva sample. If you are to be included in the research of people who are using supplemental hormones, do not change your normal routine before collecting your saliva sample. 8